


If I Burn.

by oceansinmychest



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: F/M, PWP, Smut, lemons ahoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 09:14:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9484538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceansinmychest/pseuds/oceansinmychest
Summary: Calloused fingers touch the top of her pale, snow white hand where spidery veins lay. They threaten to burst out of her skin and she thanks God that Lucifer's not there right now. She reciprocates the touch. Neither look at each other, their eyes focused on the stage. It's not enough. They're both burning alive.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time posting a smut fic online since ???? I DON'T REMEMBER AND I'M TERRIFIED. Please be gentle to my corpse.

Mina's passing is behind them.

There's oceans between them and what's been broken can't be fixed. They try to move forward, fully aware of the metamorphosis they've undergone – both together and separately. 

Caged within the Murray residence, there are days where Sir Malcolm feels like Vanessa's keeper. He watches, his eyes once cold and cruel. Now, they soften. It's a faint glimmer in his sapphire eyes, as bright as the sky. As bright as Peter had once been. It's cruel that they're both still alive and she knows this.

After indulging in tea with an old friend, Vanessa comes home. There are days where she wishes she could fly away, but she's tethered to Malcolm. Their souls are bound in the most deplorable and monstrously beautiful way.

On her nightstand, she spies a note. A letter. She recognizes his writing immediately. An invitation to the opera. At night when the moon is full and the Devil might take hold, she wears black and blue. The front dips lower, a testament to her newly found liberation (free, free: for how long, Miss Ives?).

When they meet outside the opera house, she feels his eyes upon him. Yes, look at me. What am I to you? Who am I to you? The possibilities are endless and they plague her as much as the times she spent writhing on the bed, shrieking in tongues with his cold-hearted gaze on her.

“You look beautiful,” he rasps, ever the hunter when he offers his arm to her. She accepts. In doing so, she offers herself to him silently. Her eyes are inquisitively searching his, but he offers not the answers he seeks. Not now.

Do you see me as a girl, Malcolm?

Vanessa thanks him, bowing her head the way she used to do when she was a girl. It's a game she knows – of cordial courtship.

Together, they watch the opera. She uses a pair of binoculars fixated to a thin, golden rod. The soprano wails her melancholy woes and it's so very garish. For the most part, Malcolm keeps his hands to himself. Folded in his lap, restrained like a hunter with a gun and no idea what to do when your prey is too far away. Shoulders stir within the confines of his tuxedo. He reminds himself that Mina is put to rest. He has Vanessa to thank.

She'll never be a daughter to him.

She'll be more.

Calloused fingers touch the top of her pale, snow white hand where spidery veins lay. They threaten to burst out of her skin and she thanks God that Lucifer's not there right now. She reciprocates the touch. Neither look at each other, their eyes focused on the stage. It's not enough. They're both burning alive, courtesy of the static.

The show ends. They clap; they recoil. His guilty hangs as heavy as the curtains behind them.

Outside, the cool night air washes over them. She remembers to breathe despite her corset's chokehold. Malcolm parts his lips deliberately. He can be a charming and manipulative man, using words as weapons and tools alike, but this isn't a battle they're cut out for. They're damaged and the only thing they have is each other.

“I must have you.”

There's the rub.

His confession is a torn and tattered soliloquy. She's more than his daughter, more than his ward. Is she to be another one of his conquered prizes? No, she thinks not. He dooms himself by merely uttering the words and she seals it with a kiss that says, “Oh, Malcolm. You already have me.”

From afar, it seems to be just another May-December affair. No one acknowledges their scandalous lives. Rumors be damned. When he kisses her harder in the pouring rain, the bristles of his beard tickle her face. She clings to his coattails, holding onto his jacket for warmth. For all that could and couldn't be. A rough palm coasts along her back, not low enough to be immodest – though she wishes it were.

Somehow, they make it home. The time in-between blurs together.

She finds his bedroom to be an unusual place, just another voyage of circumstance. A map of Africa adorns the wall, framed in black. A compass and relics from Egypt grace the shelves. Even a ceremonial dagger with an ivory handle finds its place on display. In the morning, when this is over, she'll find herself tracing a finger along the Nile with his hand upon her wrist. Guiding her.

The sheets are as black as their union. She's dreamt of this from the moment the Devil came to her disguised as him. What a messy, complicated thing: reawakened sexuality. 

She refuses to be the hunter when she kisses him. Her fingers are clawed knotting into his short, tugging off the bowtie, and hastily unbuttoning the shirt until it hangs open. She bites his lips until they bleed. It's salt and metal on her tongue. A moan is muffled in between when he pushes up her skirts, demands that she take them off lest he rip them off from her body.

Miss Vanessa Ives is a pretty prize sought after by all.

On the bed, she straddles his face with her lap. He litters her thighs with bruises and bite marks, sucking with tongue and teeth alike. Her head lolls back when she rocks her hips into his tongue, his teeth, his skilled fingers that twist inside of her. He thumbs a button that leaves her howling, shuddering. For a human, he's quite the serpent.

He relishes her taste. It's sweet to him. It's poison to them both.

Wavy, inky locks fall free from her meticulous bun. Her body lurches forward. She smirks fiendishly, but possession no longer guides her. Vanessa leans forward to palm his hardness through his trousers. The muffled grunt, on his part, delights her. She frees his cock just for a lick, a taste. A slender hand pumps his shaft. 

It doesn't end this way.

The beast in Malcolm can't be contained forever. He flips her over, his lips glistening with the taste of her. Another kiss becomes a sacrifice. It robs her of breath and him as well.

She guides him to her entrance to assure him that neither of them are in control (no matter how desperately they both seek it). Their hips meet. They both see stars. It reminds him of the time he showed her constellations as a child. How she looked to him, hoping for his patriarchal approval. He crushes the thought when he holds her close and she wraps her legs around his waist, locking her ankles together.

He fucks like a savage.

By Jove, it's exactly what she needs.

“You foolish girl, you wonderfully foolish woman,” he croons into her ear. “You've trapped me. You have me.”

It's the closest thing to an “I love you” from the stern, aggressive Sir Malcolm.

Hard strokes, shallow thrusts. He teases her mercilessly, his thickness against her before pushing deeper inside. She catches his chapped lips with hers. It's sticky and wet, as though they're putting on a debauched show.

He squeezes her breasts, paws them, and in a depraved moment, she wishes he would kiss them. Her teeth find his neck. She can bite back – a small repentance for the marks on her thighs that will last for days.

The bed rattles; the sheets twist around him. They didn't lay normally, their bodies horizontal on the vertical mattress. He holds her by one wrist, a small remembrance for all his rage and loss directed at her. He cradles the crown of her skull, as though he's mortified of letting go. 

She gasps when he fills her.

It's a silent scream they both share.

They come undone, breathless and desperate to unite.

He holds her until the morning light.


End file.
